Bornholm Residents' Verdict on the Unitary Authority’s First Year
by Ulrik Kjær, SDU og Leif Olsen, AKF, October 2004
Summary
On 1 January 2003, in the first voluntary amalgamation of local authorities in Denmark since the local government reorganisation of 1970, Bornholm’s five district councils and one county council were combined into a unitary regional authority. Lengthy discussions had gone before, with feelings often running high as advantages and disadvantages were mustered in the debate over the wisdom of realising the idea of »one island – one council« instead of continuing under the old local government structure. A distinct majority of the island’s inhabitants took the decision in favour of an amalgamation of local authorities, and »The Regional Municipality of Bornholm« became a reality. Taking the decision is one thing – but what follows, when the joint new regional authority has to be made to function, is another matter. Many fundamental questions arise and invite discussion by councillors, residents and council employees, for example: How is the unitary authority actually working? Are things going as expected? Or worse? Or better? These are questions of key importance and interest for the inhabitants of Bornholm, but also for residents of all the many other district authorities that are facing, or considering the possibility of, amalgamation in the next few years. Many people will therefore be interested in knowing something about what can be learnt from the experience on Bornholm.
The local councillors on Bornholm naturally all had, and still have, an opinion on and interest in the whole idea behind the amalgamation, or the »one island – one council« project, as was also frequently mentioned in the foregoing debate. They have therefore been watching the course of the new unitary authority’s early life with close interest, especially as the continuing political debate on Bornholm is very much about the implementation of the amalgamation, and possible running adjustments to it. The very question of how »things are going« with the amalgamation process is therefore one of intense current political interest. Similarly, it is the case that the majority of council employees on Bornholm have an opinion on whether the regional authority got off to a good start. In practice, the amalgamation directly affected a fair proportion of them, but beyond that, broadly speaking all of them were mentally involved with it to a greater or lesser extent, because they could not know in advance what the practical changes would consist in, nor to what extent the changes would affect them personally. The employees will therefore be able to give an interesting account and appraisal of the early practical consequences of the amalgamation.
But what about the residents – the people who in the end are to benefit from the amalgamation and the efforts that have been, and are continuing to be, manifested amongst the councillors and council employees? How do they view the regional authority they have been given in place of their own smaller district council and the county council? That is the question addressed in this report.
Other reports that have emerged from the research project that is observing the local authority amalgamation on Bornholm have documented the way in which it has affected various aspects of »local authority life« on the island, namely the administrative level (Christoffersen et al., 2003) and the political level (Kjær, 2004a). This report supplements those, and focuses on the residents and their views about, attitudes to, and early experiences of, the amalgamation, just under a year after it took place.
The report is based on a questionnaire survey carried out in October and November 2003. A total of 1,423 Bornholm residents aged 18 or over out of 2,473 to whom the questionnaire was distributed took the time to reply. This represents a response rate of 58 per cent, which is quite satisfactory for this type of survey. The questionnaire was fairly comprehensive and contained a total of 140 questions, divided among the following series of topics:
1. Voting behaviour at general and local elections
2. Opinion of the local authority amalgamation
3. Extent and character of contacts with the local authority
4. Satisfaction with local authority service
5. »The Regional Municipality of Bornholm« website
6. Interest and participation in local authority politics
7. Opinion of the authority and its councillors
8. Sociodemographic background information
Most of the replies will be used to study changes over time – we will be putting the same questions to residents again in the spring of 2005. We will then know the residents’ feelings after almost a year and after about 2½ years, and thus be in a better position to assess the development from the turbulent first phase – start-up – to the perhaps less turbulent operational phase. It is anticipated that the results of these future comparisons will be available in the course of the first half of 2006.
However, the survey also included a number of questions that directly addressed the residents’ views on the actual amalgamation process and the regional authority’s first year of existence. As there is a lively debate in progress, which is by no means confined to the island itself, about how well or badly the Bornholm local authority amalgamation process has unfolded, we have come to the conclusion that the information that we have about the residents’ views on the matter deserves to be published now, in 2004.
We are therefore issuing this report, in which we analyse that part of the residents’ responses that deals with the amalgamation process itself and residents’ first experiences of the infant new authority (Chapters 2–5). The report also contains a record of the first part of the survey (Annexes 1 and 2), which will be repeated in the spring of 2005.
As regards the findings of the survey, these indicate quite unambiguously that the verdict of the residents of Bornholm on the amalgamation, as it has unfolded so far, is fairly negative. Only one question is analysed in Chapter 2, but it is a question which may be said to be a quite comprehensive measure of the residents’ opinion of what they have so far seen result from the merger of the local authorities on the island. For we actually asked the electors how they would vote on a proposed amalgamation if it were again to be put to a referendum as it was on 29 May 2001, when the same electors voted with a large majority in favour. It is possible to hold different normative opinions on the appropriateness of referendums, and to differ over whether it is possible for voters to weigh up various aspects and arguments against each other and condense their opinions on them to a single cross on a ballot paper that says »yes« or »no« to a merger. Similarly, differing views can be held about to what extent politicians can subsequently reverse the process and use the simple vote for or against to inform detailed decisions. All that being as it may, the very fact of the limitation of voters’ choice in the referendum to just »yes« or »no« to amalgamation was convenient for the purposes of this study, because it enabled us to follow up with a similar question and thereby assess the voters’ overall verdict on the approximately 2½ years that had elapsed between the referendum and the survey.
In the intervening period, voters had had the opportunity to learn a little more about some of the many details that had not been clarified when they stood in the polling booths in 2001. This learning period covered both the 18 months or so in which the outlines of the new combined authority were planned, and the first year after the formal start-up of the unitary regional authority on 1 January 2003. The survey found that the distinct majority which existed among voters at the referendum on 29 May 2001 had vanished. Two and a half years after the decision, the result would not have been 74 per cent in favour and 26 per cent against, but 52 per cent in favour and 48 per cent against. As mentioned above, the survey was based on a sample, and as there is therefore a statistical uncertainty attaching to the result of our hypothetical referendum, the principal conclusion is that it would have been a close contest had the residents been offered the chance to vote again a little under a year after the amalgamation.
An analysis of the responses according to the old local government boundaries reveals that the strength of this swing was different in each of the former districts. Residents of the former Nexø district had moved a little more towards voting »no« than residents of the other four districts – and since it was precisely in Nexø that the »yes« camp had had the smallest lead to begin with, this swing actually means that a referendum at the end of 2003 would have resulted in a »no« in Nexø. This is by no means an unimportant detail, because the terms of the referendum in 2001 provided that a majority in favour was required in each of the five districts: a majority against in only one of the districts would have meant rejection of the proposal, and the amalgamation would not have gone ahead.
Chapter 2 gives a further analysis of which voters had left the »yes« camp and joined the opposition to amalgamation. Women and young people in particular had regretted voting »yes« to a slightly greater extent than men and older voters, while there were no significant differences between different educational and occupational groups. However, it is also important that demography does not appear to have played a great part. When geography is brought into the analysis, it emerges that the most interesting geographical variable is not which of the former local government districts the voters belonged to, but rather whether they were town-dwellers or lived in rural localities. Or, to be more precise, what kind of town they lived in. Thus, people living in Rønne, small towns or villages and rural areas reacted in a fairly similar way, while it was in Allinge-Sandvig, Hasle, Nexø and Aakirkeby, the principal towns of the other four former districts, that negative attitudes had particularly increased. However, the analyses in Chapter 2 reveal that even when this geographical variable is taken into account, we cannot determine to any particularly high degree what categories of voters had abandoned the »yes« camp on the matter of local authority amalgamation. On the other hand, if residents’ attitudes and experiences are taken into consideration, a better account can be given, and therefore Chapter 3 focuses on attitudes to the amalgamation and experiences and evaluations of the provision of local government services.
Chapter 3 gives an insight into how the residents of Bornholm, both as taxpayers and as users, assess the amalgamation and the development in local government services after just under a year of operation of the new regional authority. These are, therefore, assessments made in the critical transition phase, when the new structure and the new management principles on »Central Administration – Decentral Management« were being implemented (Christoffersen et al., 2003). The reason for speaking of a critical transitional phase is that everybody – not only councillors, council officials and council employees, but also ordinary residents and users – was affected by the new initiatives, which take time to implement and become familiar with. It may therefore be that taxpayers’ and users’ verdicts on the development of local government services in this transitional phase are relatively less favourable than they would be in phases characterised by greater stability and familiarity with the service system.
We do not know to what extent residents had expectations that the amalgamation would mean that local tax revenue could be more efficiently used in the production of local government services. However, it is a relatively small proportion – only a good tenth of residents – that considered that the amalgamation had led to more efficient use of taxpayers’ money in the production of services. In contrast, it is a relatively large proportion – a full 60 per cent – that believed that the efficiency of local tax revenue utilisation had declined in terms of production of services. There was a little more optimism with regard to the future on this point, but it is still noteworthy that more than a third of residents expected deterioration in the utilisation of tax revenue in the production of services over the first 2–3 years of the regional authority’s existence.
We asked residents to assess whether the creation of the regional authority had led to improvements or deterioration in local government services. In reply to this, a good one in twenty thought that the creation of the regional authority had led to general improvements in services. However, there were many more (31 per cent) who thought that there had been no change, and the great majority (63 per cent) thought that there had been a general deterioration in services.
We asked whether it had become easier or harder to contact the local government administration since the amalgamation. One in twenty respondents answered that there had been an improvement, while 61 per cent said there had been a worsening and 34 per cent thought there had been no change. There is thus a solid majority of residents who felt that it had become harder to contact the local authority since the amalgamation.
There may have been widespread expectations among residents that services would improve following the amalgamation, but it must be concluded that just under a year after the event, expectations of improvements were moderate and expectations of deterioration were relatively great. Of the eight areas concerning which we asked residents to express their general expectations, there were only two in which more people expected improvements than deterioration. These two areas were »work, training and education« and »tax and the register office«. As regards the other six areas (»children and families«, »leisure and culture«, »health and care«, »range and extent of services«, »quality« and »accessibility«), a distinct majority of residents expected deterioration in the next 2–3 years of the regional authority’s existence.
The overall impression gained from Chapter 3 is that residents are generally very critical of the history of the regional authority so far, as regards the amalgamation and the development of local government services etc. They are also sceptical regarding the possibility of reaping benefits due to the amalgamation in the next couple of years. These findings help to explain why residents have swung away from a very favourable assessment of the opportunities in the new regional authority to a more sceptical attitude, with the island’s population now being divided equally on the question of whether the amalgamation was a good idea or not. It is also seen that on many points it is the residents of the former Nexø district who are the most sceptical. Moreover, it is the residents of the principal towns of the former districts (with the exception of Rønne) who hold the most critical views, and not the inhabitants of the rural areas, as one perhaps might have expected.
Questionnaires are mainly comprised of »closed questions«, where the researchers have formulated a number of alternative answers to each question that respondents have to choose between. However, it is also possible to use open questions, which give respondents the opportunity to write their opinions in detail and in their own words. We decided to include some open questions to ask residents to tell us what they thought were the best and the worst things about the amalgamation. The findings are presented in Chapter 4, and are not encouraging. Thus, in one case, residents were asked to write down something, even if only one thing, they thought was good about the amalgamation. Even then, a third of those who responded wrote that they could see nothing good in the amalgamation (whereas only 1 per cent wrote that it had had no adverse consequences). There were also 4 per cent who felt they had to answer »don’t know«, and among those who could see advantages, the largest category was actually made up of those who had not yet seen anything positive come out of the merger, but were still living in hopes. However, there was also a proportion of residents who wrote that there had been real improvements, naming a number of important areas in which these could be seen: that there was now greater »political weight« for decision-making (10 per cent); that there was now a basis for uniform service across the whole of the island (10 per cent); that Bornholm as an island had been unified (8 per cent); that the island could benefit from economies of scale (5 per cent); that it now spoke with a single voice externally (5 per cent); and that there was now a basis for a uniform price structure for local government services.
Respondents found it easier to formulate their opinions of what were the worst consequences of the amalgamation. It was local councillors, in particular, that came in for criticism. Apart from the fact that a proportion of replies referred, with greater or less directness, to councillors, not less than one in four respondents directly fastened upon the councillors’ actions as the most negative aspect. Replies expressed a very widespread critical opinion of councillors’ actions and results in the first 10–11 months after the amalgamation. The next most common critical comments concerned: bad financial management (14 per cent); school closures (13 per cent); »buying in« prior to the merger (6 per cent); and transitional problems (5 per cent).
In order to establish whether the former district boundaries had lost their previous meaning and been superseded by a sense of belonging and identity in relation to the new organisational structure, and specifically whether cultural, mental and psychological relations had formed towards the new regional entity, we asked residents whether they were still conscious of the old district boundaries. Almost half of respondents replied in the affirmative. Residents of Hasle, Allinge-Gudhjem and Nexø were a little more conscious of the old district boundaries than were the residents of Rønne and Aakirkeby. Of the 606 respondents who replied affirmatively, 426 (70 per cent) wrote brief remarks describing in what way they were conscious of the old boundaries. The main topics mentioned were: councillors’ promoting special interests; sense of personal identity linked to the old district; school closures; interest groups working on the basis of the old structure; symbols and infrastructure that retained the former names and practices; organisation corresponding to the old structure; that the treatment of Rønne was unfair; the force of habit; and differences in service levels corresponding to the old structure.
In summary, it must be concluded that the old district boundaries have to a certain extent survived the unitary entity’s first year of existence. For half the island’s population, the district boundaries had already faded so much that they were no longer aware of them. However, there is a question here of whether those residents were conscious of the boundaries before the merger. Nevertheless, the other half of the island’s population was still aware of them, and felt that residents and councillors were still to some extent thinking in terms of the old map, that organisation and practices bore the stamp of the old district structure, and that sense of identity and old habits also played their part in maintaining the former district divisions.
The report concludes with a discussion in Chapter 5 which is largely concerned with the question of how this particular tendency to think, if not necessarily according to the old district boundaries, then anyway along geographical lines, ought properly to be judged. Some respondents expressed criticism of councillors promoting the interests of their own local area, but it is pointed out in Chapter 5 that that is not necessarily such a problem even if it should actually be true. There is nothing that unambiguously prescribes who it is that Danish local government councillors, including those on Bornholm, are actually supposed to represent or whose interests they are to defend. Councillors may feel that they have been elected to represent their party’s voters, a special industrial group, a particular age group, their sex, followers of a particular religious faith, etc. – or several such groups simultaneously. Another possible focus for representation could be a geographically limited part of the district, in which the councillor lives and/or has received many personal votes.
Even before the amalgamation, there were probably some local councillors on the island who to a particularly high degree acted in the interests of a smaller part of one of the districts, for example a small village, and there were probably also clear expectations on the part of the voters in such a village that the councillor’s connections with it would be visible in his or her political conduct. It might be downright »unhealthy« for such a councillor’s re-election chances too often to take account of the larger picture at the village’s expense. The situation has not necessarily changed so much, in the sense that although the districts have acquired a different form, there will still be councillors for whom links with their own locality within the district are particularly strong. How much weight the councillors on Bornholm should attach to representing not just the island as a whole but also geographically limited parts of it is not clear and is in flux, but the point is that there is a balance which the councillors must find, taking into account voters’ wishes on this very question of the way in which they are represented. This can take place through dialogue, but also through a certain selection at the polling booth, so that councillors who weight the geographical considerations in a way that accords with voters’ preferences will remain on the regional council, while those who do not hit the balance so well will lose their seats.
The discussion of geographical representation illustrates that some parts of the amalgamation process may take longer than others. The distinctly unfavourable verdict on the implementation so far of the combined district structure indicates that it is difficult to combine local authorities, and in particular, perhaps, to do it in such a way that the difficulties of the reorganisation are made palatable and intelligible for the population. But is it »just« a matter of teething problems, where a mass of reorganisational difficulties have to be lived through, and councillors and voters alike need only to get used to the new situation and find their feet in it? Or will the teething troubles become chronic, and will the public therefore continue to view the amalgamation just as critically as they do today, if not more so? That is hard to predict, and therefore the survey will be repeated in May 2005, so that another year and a half of the regional authority’s existence can be brought into the assessment of how it has been received by the residents.
Finally, the report considers the conclusions that may be drawn regarding the question of to what extent the experience of Bornholm can be applied in the rest of Denmark. It should be said that the local authority amalgamation on Bornholm was in some ways exceptional; for example, it was not just a merger of district councils, but also included the county council. It was also exceptional in that the Bornholm local authority amalgamation was voluntary, so that before the councillors could begin the process, following the norms on referendums, they had to have the residents’ support for the project.
However, we believe that other local authorities due to embark on amalgamation could advantageously take a glance at the experience on Bornholm. In the late autumn of 2007, in consequence of the local government reorganisation planned for 1 January 2007, the majority of Danish districts will find themselves at the same stage of the amalgamation process as existed on Bornholm when this survey was conducted in the late autumn of 2003. No-one can predict how popular such mergers will prove across the country, but theoretically it cannot be denied that in the new entities’ first years of existence there will be a critical period in which there will be a fall in support for the amalgamation project. The reason for carrying out local authority mergers is precisely the belief that it will be possible to reap advantages (economic and administrative) in the long term that more than outweigh the disadvantages (difficulties and costs associated with reorganisation) that, it is well recognised, will be encountered in the short term. The exact outcome cannot be theoretically predicted, as it depends on how the individual district councils choose to implement the mergers – how they choose to organise the new districts.
There can thus be anticipated a temporary fall in support for the idea of amalgamation, and therefore it may be relevant for those local authorities that face merger to consider whether it is possible to mitigate the theoretically critical point where residents have encountered the certain short-term disadvantages but have not yet felt the slightly longer-term potential gains. In the light of the experience of Bornholm, it is suggested that attention should be focused on adjusting public expectations to the reality of what a local authority merger can achieve and what it cannot. It is also suggested that in any case the following five aspects/problem areas should receive attention:
Firstly, as mentioned above, it is inherent in a local authority merger that the disadvantages will make themselves felt before the advantages. It is a communication task in this connection to ensure that this logical link is explained and discussed, so that residents do not form unrealistic expectations about the rate at which the advantages and the visions of the new district entity can be realised. Another important task in this context is to maintain and develop the fundamental political dialogue on the thing that can unify, namely the vision of a new, joint district entity with its own identity.
Secondly, a local authority merger does not in itself mean that competition between different localities for activities and resources will cease. There will continue to be manoeuvrings within the district, with towns, villages and rural areas having differing views about where public activities should be physically located. In the process of reorganisation which a local authority merger entails, such conflicts may even intensify, and therefore it is perhaps important to ensure it is clearly understood that amalgamation does not necessarily in itself lead to the resolution of such geographical tensions.
Thirdly, an amalgamation does not necessarily result in the reconciliation of political opponents: political differences continue afterwards (fortunately). As the implementation of the amalgamation is, other things being equal, the most important »item« on the local political agenda, it is the task of the opposition (to the extent that there is one) to challenge the controlling group precisely on its performance in carrying it through. There will therefore be pressure on opposition councillors to point to omissions and shortcomings in the implementation. It would be well to be prepared for this, and perhaps especially for the fact that such criticism will be, and should be seen as, political.
Fourthly, it should be remembered that the generally critical attitude that may exist locally to an amalgamation project may rub off on residents’ opinions of specific services. There will be a period during which criticism of specific local government services should be interpreted with caution, because it may be difficult to distinguish dissatisfaction with the specific service from dissatisfaction with councillors or the combined authority in general.
Fifthly and finally, there should be an awareness that by virtue of its position at the top of the local political agenda, the amalgamation may for a period become a prism through which all local authority decisions are viewed. It may, unjustly, be blamed as well as credited for local political decisions that are taken during the period of its implementation, but which perhaps would have been taken anyway, even without a merger. Amalgamation of local government districts affects so many fields and activities that it does not seem to serve any purpose for it also to be linked to general political discussions that would have taken place anyway. In particular, school closures are a topic where reflection is in place as to the extent to which they are due to district amalgamation and the extent to which they are part of a general political process of change in the school system. If closures are an element of the amalgamation, that should be made clear. If they would have taken place anyway, efforts should rightly be made to disconnect the school system from the discussion of local government structure.
These five points to be remembered in those districts which will be embarking on the same process as that on Bornholm may appear rather banal. They may also appear abstract and difficult to translate into practical politics. However, it can certainly do no harm to be aware of them when beginning the process of combining local government districts. On Bornholm it appears that on some points lessons have been dearly bought. There is no reason why that should necessarily be repeated by all that follow in Bornholm’s footsteps.
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